heavy and my mind to become a blank. This enervating fear
blends into every thought I have, whether sleeping or waking. I
have fought with all my might to rid myself of it but so far in
vain."

Here an expression of a very frequent variety. The writer is a
middle-aged man.

"I am possessed of a fear that is constantly with me that something
dreadful is going to happen and I do not seem to be able to
overcome it. I am told by physicians that I am bodily sound,
although very nervous, and that the fear is generated entirely by
autosuggestion. When at its worst, it weakens and terrorizes me and
in my better moments I am tormented with a fear of a recurrence of
a bad spell. It is fear of a fear. A year ago at this time I had a
very bad spell but got along fairly well through the summer, but I
am afraid that I will soon again be in a bad condition and lose all
that I may have gained."

The "fear of a fear" is indeed a symptom which the psychotherapist has
to fight extremely often, but as soon as he has really recognized it and
analyzed the whole mental condition, he will hardly have any difficulty
in uprooting it. I add a letter of a school-teacher in New York. He
writes:

"I am teaching in a high school. I am of a nervous temperament and
constitutionally limited in endurance. Often my work is done in a
condition of greater or less exhaustion. I find that I blush very
easily in purely freakish ways, when there is no occasion for it. I
find this blushing connecting itself with certain of the girl
pupils of my classes in a conspicuous way. It occurs hardly ever
except when my class is facing me and I seem to be powerless to
overcome it. I have always tried to live a careful moral life, but
my early life was very much secluded. I lacked entirely the free
intercourse young people usually have together and I felt awkward
with others for a long time. In the matter of the blushing, it
sometimes occurs in the case of girls who are especially pleasing
to me but also not infrequently in the case of some who are not at
all so. The whole thing might be passed over were it not that it
has considerable effect in causing constraint toward my students
and in some cases affecting them very strongly in an emotional way
at the very time of life when such things can do most harm. I
regar